Flower Gardening Class at the Huntington

Our friend Tara Kolla is teaching a flower gardening class at the Huntington Library and Gardens in San Marino this coming Saturday Oct. 2nd from 10 a.m. to noon. From the class description: “Save money at the flower market by growing your own organic blooms. Urban farmer Tara Kolla of Silver Lake Farms shares tips for growing seasonal flowers that make beautiful arrangements in the home.” I canR17;t say enough good things abo...

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Know Maintanance

ainer via Garden Rant, who interviewed Rainer on the topic of small garden ideas. As we struggle with some design mistakes we made last fall, RainerR17;s advice really rang true: Don’t bring a plant into that garden unless it has a striking form (spiky, billowing, vertical spire), strong foliage color (blues/golds/purples, etc), or a long season of blooms (2 month minimum). We had to redo our yard after last yearR17;s lead soil reports (...

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Have You Read Any Good Gardening Books?

A scene from Peter JacksonR17;s new movie. Someone asked me recently if IR17;d read any good gardening books lately. I had to admit that I havenR17;t. Year after year I pick up the same two books when I have a question, John Jeavons How to Grow More Vegetables, and The Sunset Western Garden Book. Have you read an interesting gardening book recently? If so, leave a comment....

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Making Beer in Plain Language

...r.” -Guggenheim Fellowship-winning professor of rhetoric and comparative literature Judith Butler via the Bad Writing Contest Huh? At least the terminology surrounding beer making ainR17;t that obtuse, but it certainly could use some simplification. For novice home brewers, such as us here at Homegrown Evolution, the terminology creates an unnecessary barrier as impenetrable as a graduate school seminar in the humanities. Let...

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2011 in Review: The Garden

ItR17;s was a difficult year in the garden. A lead and zinc issue screwed up my winter vegetables garden plans. At least we managed to find some river rocks and put in a path. I found this photo from December 2010. I was certainly a lot more organized that year. For 2012, IR17;m putting in raised beds to deal with the heavy metal issue and weR17;ve already planted more native plants. But most importantly one of my New Years resolution...

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Back on the Yogurt Train: How to Make Yogurt

...what I can. Lately IR17;ve realized that one consistent source of waste plastic in our kitchen comes in the form of yogurt tubs. This is a little silly, because we know how to make yogurt. In fact, I do believe we covered it in our book. Thing is, back in the day when we made yogurt, it was ErikR17;s job. When he slacked on it, I didnR17;t even consider picking it up. Chalk it up to the mysteries of division of labor in a household. An...

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USDA Zone Based Veggie Planting Schedule

Knowing when to plant vegetables is one of the big keys to edible gardening success. Unfortunately, many gardening books, websites and the back of seed packages assume youR17;re in a place with easily delineated seasons. What about those of us in Alaska, Southern California, Texas, Florida or Arizona? WouldnR17;t it be nice to have a web-based vegetable planting calendar based on zip codes? While itR17;s not down to the zip code level,...

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Our Keyhole Vegetable Bed: What Worked and What Didn’t Work

This is what our keyhole bed looked like yesterday just before I fed the remaining vegetables to our chickens and the compost pile. Ignore the large pot–thatR17;s a future solar powered fountain that will be incorporated in a new vegetable garden weR17;re working on. HereR17;s what the keyhole bed looked like just after I installed it back in October. Note the compost repository in the center of the bed. I used straw wattle (ava...

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Front Yard Vegetable Garden Update

One advantage of living in a slightly rough-around-the-edges Los Angeles neighborhood is that nobody gets bent out of shape about front yard vegetable gardens. Indeed, they are  a tradition in immigrant neighborhoods. The picture above is an update of one of the front yard gardens Kelly blogged about back in May. It looked like this when she first blogged about it. Not sure exactly whatR17;s growing here. It looks like beans from a distanc...

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Three Front Yard Vegetable Gardens

ther complicated or expensive. Neighborhood gardens like this are really what inspired us when we started out. They taught us to plant boldly, to plant casually, and to plant anywhere we wanted. This yard above delighted me. It seems theyR17;ve given up on their lawn and instead have planted an army of caged veggie seedlings in orderly rows across their front yard. Not pictured is a little strip of  established food garden at the front of the...

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